Marketing Pilgrim

You rarely hear people complaining about having too much business, but when that business arrives in the form of 1,000 Groupon Coupons it can be a huge headache for everyone involved.

Jessie Burke runs a small cafe in Portland and she decided to try the group deal service in hopes of getting some new customers. What she got was an endless stream of people who came for the deal and probably never returned after that.

In a recent blog post that has gone more viral than the author had hoped, Burke says that working with Groupon was the biggest business mistake she’s ever made. She takes full responsibility for her choices but still outed the company for two policies which may or may not be true.

A 2% increase in holiday sales may not sound like much, but with unemployment still running rampant through the US, it’s good news for retailers. Financial consultants Deloitte, are joining those that went before them saying that there will be an increase in spending this year and that much of it will be due to the online sector.

Carl Steidtmann, Deloitte’s chief economist says,

“Should consumers receive good tidings later this season in the way of falling energy prices or additional stock market gains, they may be able to lend retailers a bit more holiday cheer. However, given the unsteady pace of economic recovery, retailers should expect only a small uptick in holiday sales this year.”

If you’re debating which of the remaining 2010 internet marketing conferences you should attend, I have a suggestion for ya: PubCon!

PubCon is returning to Las Vegas November 8th thru 11th and it promises to be better than ever! The four day event is packed with great sessions, great speakers, and great networking. In fact, the last day is all about the drinking networking!

Whether you’re a beginner or pro, you’ll find just about every aspect of online marketing is covered, including:

• SEO/SEM
• Reputation management <– my favorite!
• Web 2.0 (Social Media)
• Affiliate marketing
• Domaining
• Video/Multimedia

Perhaps the best thing about PubCon is the price tag. Despite the awesome content, PubCon is just $849 for a full week pass!

<oprah voice> It. Gets. Better! </oprah>

There are two ways to look at Google’s new two-step security installation for Google Apps.

1. Google just made it harder for someone to hack into your account.

or

2. Google just gave hackers everywhere an incentive to steal your iPhone!

Of course, the chances of a hacker managing to get their hands on your Google password AND your cell phone are pretty slim, so we suspect option 1 will be the main outcome of this accouncement:

Two-step verification is easy to set up, manage and use. When enabled by an administrator, it requires two means of identification to sign in to a Google Apps account, something you know: a password, and something you have: a mobile phone. It doesn’t require any special tokens or devices. After entering your password, a verification code is sent to your mobile phone via SMS, voice calls, or generated on an application you can install on your Android, BlackBerry or iPhone device.

When you live by the sword, you die by the sword. Right?

Well, Cuil had its PR engine revved to the max, when it launched in 2008. It claimed to be bigger, better, and safer to use than Google.

Fast forward a little over two years and let’s see how things are working out for Cuil, shall we?

Yikes, apparently it can’t even keep the lights on. I mean, if the rumors are true, and Cuil’s still trying to find a buyer to rescue it, then you’d think someone would cough up the $10 needed to host a “We’ll be right back!” page. Apparently not.

So much for the “Google Killer” with a $200 million valuation.

Being a slow news day (thus far at least), I started to look around and a report from July of this year from Network Solutions and some partners caught my eye. It was used to make a point over at Small Business Trends about SMB’s (small and medium business) and social media (a point which is much different than the one here so go check it out). When you take a little deeper dive into the findings it looks like the SMB group as a whole is saying what it says a lot when it comes to the latest and greatest business practices: We aren’t getting it like you think we are.